Please Respond Personally: Commemorating the 1974 Black Student Sit-In
March 11th – July 19th, 2024, Schimmelpfeng Gallery, Monday – Friday, 9-4pm
Dodd Center for Human Rights, University of Connecticut
Exhibit Opening Event: March 28th, 3-5pm @ Archives & Special Collections, Dodd Center
Opening to the public Monday, March 11th, 2024, the UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections will mount a 50th Anniversary Exhibition commemorating the direct action taken by Black and Brown students on the Storrs campus to challenge structural racism in higher education by sitting in at the Wilbur Cross Library on April 22nd 1974. This historic event of activism, where roughly 370 students occupied the library at varying times across 3 days, was the culminating event during a semester long campaign of student organizing to demand representation and resources for students of color at the University of Connecticut. Through curated documents this exhibition will feature the perspectives of the student organizers, the Afro-American Cultural Center, the University and its administration to portray this campus-wide call to action which resonates to our present day. This 50th anniversary is also an opportunity to highlight approaches to student activism and the centrality of the library as an institutional setting both for democracy and also one vulnerable to upholding systems of oppression.
This exhibition draws from the experiences of alumni Rodney Bass (’75BA/’76MA) who read the demands during the sit-in and was co-chair of the Organization of African American Students (OAAS). The archives podcast d’Archive produced an interview with Rodney about Black student organizing in the mid-1970s on the Storrs campus which is revealing in understanding their approach to making demands upon the university for their representation in the student body.
My name is Nathaniel James Bracey. I graduated from UConn May 1976. I was one of the organizers of the Library sit in protest. Subsequently I served as co-editor of the student newspaper Contact and President of OAAS from 1974-1975.
I was also one of the few African American students from out of state; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The protest, along with the 13 demands for greater equity for African American students was the most pivotal event in the university’s history and perhaps still so. Why? Because it begin the institutional and behavioral transformation of the university from being an high achieving academic and non inclusive, racially hostile university to being a high achieving academic, ready to embrace racial diversity, university.
I participated in the library protest. I was one of the organizers. However two of the principal organizers, at the time PH.D candidate, Gene C. Young, (deceased) and Gary King, still living, in my opinion along with a few others lead the rest of us to stage not only a protest, but they help executed a plan where very little property was damage and no one suffered any injuries outside of some minor cuts and bruises sustained while being arrested by State Police. Because of the absence of injuries and property damage, the protest and our accompanying demands for greater equity rightfully received the attention we were all seeking. Dr. Young and Dr. King along with a few others and hundreds of courageous students, forever change for the better, UConn’s destiny from being a racially hostile high performing university to a more inclusive and caring university. A plaque should be installed on campus especially in or outside of the library denoting this momentous occasion listing the names of the participating protest students, beginning with Dr. Gene C. Young and Dr. Gary King
Thank you very much Mr. Bracey for sharing your experience as an alumni who took part in this historic protest on our campus! Your’s is the kind of personal reflection we look for to enhance the archival collections that we preserve. I look forward to communicating with you further about programs that are accompanying this anniversary exhibition and please stay in touch.
-Graham